How to get CLM right: 5 lessons from an Agiloft champion 

When implementing Agiloft’s Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) platform, it’s best to have a champion in your corner that knows the ins and outs for how best to set yourself up for success on day one. While Agiloft is known for its ease of use and flexibility, being able to quickly establish your unique contracting process in the Agiloft platform gets you off to a strong start in making the difference you’re seeking. 

We went to one of our premier partners, Spectrum Mobility, to ask, “What are the top 5 pieces of advice you would give to a new customer?” Here’s what we came away with: 

1. Start with business goals, not product features 

What are you trying to solve? That is the first question you need to start with. While you may think it’s about “automating my contracting process” or “integrating e-signature,”you need to ask yourself what is the pain point that you’re trying to solve?  

Is it that a slow contracting process is costing you 10% annually in revenue, or maybe Legal spends 25% of its time on administrative tasks? Is Procurement unable to enforce standard procedures, costing the organization 30% more in unnecessary charges because of duplicative contracts?  

Being able to identify specific problems you’re trying to solve and monetizing or 
putting a measurable goal in place that you can achieve through the CLM solution you seek will help to answer which vendor is the best to implement. If you don’t, you’ll end up comparing buttons and switches.  

Understanding the pain points you’re trying to solve through identified business goals forces you to look at the overall solution. There are a lot of CLM vendors out there vying for your attention, and some of these platforms do many of the same things. It can be hard to tell the difference between all the CLM vendors.  

A step beyond business goals, you need to ask yourself: what makes up a vendor? Is it simply the features that they’re selling you on, the buttons and switches that make things happen in your contracting workflow? Or is it their response time and the ability to understand the problem you’re trying to solve? How you’re being treated is just as important as how they solve your problem technologically. If you feel heard and the company has strong customer references and recognition within the CLM marketplace, then as long as the features help you reach your business goals, you’re in the right place. 

2. Stakeholder buy-in matters

People like being heard. Especially if they are impacted by a decision being made about their livelihood. Sometimes business decisions need to be made at a certain level and handed down through the organization. A CLM solution is not one of those cases.  

CLM software impacts too many different departments in too many ways – just consider Finance tracking invoices, Sales tracking contracts, and Procurement tracking commitments, to name a few. Aytan Leibowitz, co-founder and CEO of Spectrum Mobility says, “Go beyond executive leadership to include department heads, legal teams, procurement managers, and end-users from sales and finance. Use a stakeholder map to categorize individuals by influence, interest, and role.” By including all stakeholders, regardless of role, you ensure not only upper management buy in but user adoption. Both are key to CLM implementation success. 

3. Don’t underestimate data and migration 

Contract data is important to the entire organization. Having access to terms, conditions, obligations, and consequences reverberates throughout typically siloed organizations. Through integrations, contract data can be made available so that:  

• Procurement knows the threshold amount of inventory a vendor is required to maintain 

• Finance knows if someone has not paid in the agreed upon amount of time, and 

• Marketing knows if the organization is due recognition it should have contractually received.  

By integrating contract data into other systems that different departments work in every day, there is no need to log into a contract repository that may or may not be understood. The specific data that each department needs can be surfaced in their own applications automatically without having to bother anyone in Legal or Contracting.  

“With proper integrations into Agiloft, departments across the organization can have access to contract data that is typically locked away in folders. Critical integrations give access to information that can inform strategic decisions that affect the entire company,” Leibowitz says. Seriously consider the positive implications of sharing contract data throughout your organization as you lay out your CLM implementation plans.  

4. Crawl-walk-run approach

Implementing any software application across an enterprise can be a daunting experience. There are organizations that have successfully implemented a large-scale solution all at once, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Typically, the safer choice is to do a smaller implementation, incorporating the crawl-walk-run methodology in your CLM implementation. Start with maybe just one workflow or contracting process. See what worked well and what needs more improvement. After improvements have been made, introduce an additional workflow or more complexity. With every iteration, you will have grown and improved your contracting process. 

Pick a solution that allows you to either start small or go big, depending on your goals. A solution’s ability to scale up to an almost infinite level puts no constraints on starting small, improving, and adding additional workflows at a reasonable pace, or even going enterprise-wide from the get-go.  

5. Active continuous improvement

While lean continuous improvement is best known within the manufacturing space, its core principles can be applied to any business process, and CLM implementation, in particular.  

The essence of lean continuous improvement is to routinely make small, incremental improvements in processes so that waste is eliminated and efficiencies are maximized. By applying this principle to CLM software, you can grow into the most efficient form of contracting. Whether you start small with one workflow or implement CLM across the enterprise, there is always room for improvement.  

But in considering growth and improvement, you need to keep in mind the future as much as you do your CLM implementation. Some systems are limited in their ability to scale or even flex once implemented. As change occurs as your organization grows, can you adapt and change workflows? Sometimes this important point is missed when you’re so happy to have solved the problem of today, but you also need to be mindful of the problems that will pop up tomorrow.  

Every CLM implementation is unique

While every organization is different, the 5 points above are critical for any CLM implementation. You need not only the right solution, but the right implementation partner to ensure your CLM implementation achieves the current (and future) goals you have defined.  

Keep these points in mind, rely on a great implementation partner, and make sure to choose the right solution that fits your organization’s unique needs.  

Let’s talk about planning your successful CLM implementation